Solid tumors must establish a blood supply and have enhanced glucose metabolism to grow beyond a few millimeters. How they sense hypoxia, and respond by activating hypoxia-inducible genes and secreting angiogenic factors to establish a blood system is central to cancer biology. Many tumors contain hypoxic microenvironments, which have been associated with malignant progression, metastasis and resistance to radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
The discovery of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) gave some insight into the regulation of hypoxia-inducible genes (U.S. Pat. No. 5,882,914 and WO9639426; WO9948916). HIF-1 is composed of two subunits HIF-1α and HIF-1β and it binds hypoxia-response elements (HREs) in enhancers of genes encoding angiogenic factors such as VEGF and glycolysis-related proteins such as glycolytic enzymes and glucose transporter 1 and 3 (GLU-1 and 3).
It has been demonstrated that engineered down-regulation of HIF-1α by intratumoral gene transfer of an antisense HIF-1α plasmid leads to the down-regulation of VEGF, and decreased tumor microvessel density (WO 0076497, Sun X et al, Gene Therapy (2001) 8, 638-645). The plasmid contained a 320-bp cDNA fragment encoding 5′-end of HIF-1α (nucleotides 152-454; Genebank AF003698). Furthermore, in the International Patent Application cited above a method was described based on that the expression vector should be used in conjunction with an immunotherapeutic agent. However, a major weakness with the expression plasmid approach is that it will not be suitable as a therapeutic agent due to its size and the nuclease sensitivity of the expression product.
Besides the plasmid expressing a HIF-1α fragment a few antisense oligonucleotides targeting HIF-1α have been designed as research tools to study a specific biological mechanism or biological target. For example the antisense inhibition of HIF-1α expression in hypoxic explants have been shown to inhibit expression of TGFβ (Caniggia, I., et al J. of Clinical Investigation, March 2000, 105, 577-587). In this particular study, only one antisense oligonucleotide was synthesized, a phosphorothioate targeted against the sequence adjacent to the AUG initiation codon of HIF-1α mRNA. The sequences were HIF-1α 5′-GCCGGCGCCCTCCAT-3′ and the HIF-1α down regulation was demonstrated at mRNA level. This oligo has been used to study the role of HIF-1α in extravillous trophoblast outgrowth and invasion, and implicated at potential role of HIF-1α in pre-eclampsia (Caniggia, I. et al Placenta (2000), 21, Supplement A, Trophoblast Research 14, S25-S30).
Another study, using the same oligonucleotide sequence as above, showed that antisense inhibition of HIF-1α resulted in loss of peroxisome proliferator-active receptors (PPARs) (Narravula, S, and Colgan S. P., J. of Immunology, 2001, 166, 7543-7548). The above mentioned oligo has also been used to show that nickel requires HIF-1α to induce plasminogen activator inhibitior-1 (PAI-1) (Andrew, A. S. Klei L. R., Barchowsky A, Am. J. Physiol. Lung Cell Mol. Physiol. 281, L607-L615, 2001).
A single antisense oligonucleotide has also been used to study the two splice variants of the hypoxia-inducible factor HIF-1α as potential dimerization partner of ARNT2 in neurons. The antisense oligonucleotide was the phosphorothioate-modification of the sequence: 5′-TCTTCTCGTTCTCGCC-3′. Treating cells with this oligonucleotide resulted in inhibition of [3H]thymidine incorporation, but did not have an effect on apoptosis in normoxic cells (Drutel et. al. (2000) Eur. J. Neurosci. 12, 3701-3708).
Furthermore, a single antisense oligonucleotide for HIF-1α have been showed to inhibit the increased gene expression of cardiac endothelin (ET)-1 and it was hypothesized that HIF-1α is involved in increased myocardial expression of the ET-1 gene in heart failure (Kakinuma, Y. et al, Circulation, 2001; 103, 2387-2394). The antisense oligonucleotide had the following sequence: CCTCCATGGCGAATCGGTGC.
Currently, there are no known therapeutic antisense agents, which effectively inhibit the synthesis of HIF-1α and which can be used for the treatment of a disease. Consequently, there is a need for agents capable of effectively inhibiting the HIF-1α function to be used in the treatment of e.g. cancer and pre-eclampsia.